'The Tackiest Street In America Contest': Nominations Are Open

     I live in Key West, Florida, whose main street, I'm sorry to say, is probably the tackiest street in America. I could be wrong, of course, because ours is a country with lots of tacky and I can't pretend to have seen it all .. or even a large part of it. Which is why I've decided to solicit nominations for the honor, to be measured again my own Duval Street. Whoever submits the winner -- which will be judged by an impartial panel I'll control with an iron fist -- will win either a life-sized statue of Andrew Dice Clay dressed as a Degas ballerina or a free hunting trip with Dick Cheney. The choice will be his/hers.
     Now for the sake of clarity, I should define 'tacky'. Tacky doesn't necessarily mean dirty or broken down, although each might easily accompany it. Tacky does mean tawdry, tasteless, cheap and exploitive. Golly gee ... think of Sarah Palin. And if you don't care to do that (and who could blame you?), think of John Edwards.
       Please note that I have no political biases.
      And that is Duval Street: two lanes that run for less than a mile from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean; two lanes than are tawdry, tasteless, cheap and exploitive; two lanes that are a testimony to municipal dysfunction and indigenous greed.
      I recently counted forty-seven T-shirt shops on Duval. Forty-seven! Some of the more tasteless shirts displayed in their windows said:

         I Pee In Pools

         I'm no gynecologist,
              But I'll Take A Look.

          My parents said I could become anything,
                So I became an ASSHOLE.

           I shaved my balls for this?

      Of course, every shirt boasts Key West as its source, as if asserting that it reflects the values of the city and its residents. And once inside the shops, one finds even subtler slogans of Key West like ..

           Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck

      But that's not all. In addition to the T-shirt sellers along this miserable mile are forty-one .. count 'em .. forty-one bars! You think I'm kidding? No, in fact, I'm not. (Live music begins blaring at ten in the morning.) There are also two strip joints, a 'gentlemen's club', an on-street escort service, a nudie bar, and an assortment of chain operators: a Hard Rock Cafe, a Fat Tuesday, a Banana Republic, Coach, Express and two drugstores whose sales of headache remedies must surely account for the majority of their business.
       And finally, to bottom out this stretch of 'Keys Sleaze', we're confronted with aggressive street peddlers, merchandise hustlers, pushy panhandlers, and abusive drunks who caroom along the sidewalks like horizontal avalanches.

       I accept that some tacky ambiance can be expected in a tourist town. And Key West is certainly a tourist town: a tiny, two by four-mile island that hosts nearly two and a half million people a year, with over one million of those (all on Duval) staying just for the day, buying a margarita or two and an overpriced T-shirt, maybe having a burger and then urinating enough to nearly overload our municipal waste system. And of those, almost nine hundred thousand come off cruise ships that arrive in the morning and leave by sunset.
       But now hear this! At this very moment, our greed-besotted leaders are considering an expansion of the Key West ship channel to handle the newest cruise ships: the behemoths that carry 5000 passengers and 2500 crew .. which I'm told are to be followed by a second generation of giants that carry 10,000!
       Can you imagine what Duval Street and its surroundings will look like when and if that happens? Can the diversity of this beautiful little island survive under the weight of, say, another million and a half people a year?

       The answers could be suggested by history because Key West has consistently shown itself to be the most short-sighted city in the United States; a city that was once the richest per capita in the country and thirty-five years later was the poorest.
      In the 19th century, it was the center of the American cigar industry, producing some 100 million cigars a year. Shortsighted labor policies caused the industry to abandon the island and move to Tampa. Then it became the largest producer of green turtle in the nation .. that is, until the turtles were hunted to near extinction. The same thing happened to its flourishing sponge industry which imploded, and most recently to the thriving shrimp fleet which shrank to nearly nothing as a result of over-fishing.
      In other words, just about every asset Key West has enjoyed has turned first to gold and then -- driven by blind greed -- to dreck.
       Today it still has magic, with pictureque old neighborhoods and buildings shaded by flowering trees and blossoming bougainvillea as beautiful as anything to be seen anywhere. It still draws and welcomes writers and painters and sculptors and musicians and playwrights (and everyone else) to its gentle climate and to its even gentler tradition of tolerance for all.
        But Duval Street has become a metastasizing cancer spread by the greed of the landlords, bar owners, shop keepers, tour operators, politicians and bankers who believe that any new business is good business and who continue to argue that more is always better.
       They do nothing to control the cancer or to treat it in any way. And they ignore the symptomatic and ominous complaints of tourists -- on whom the city dependa almost entirely -- who swear they'll never return.
       So the reason I nominate Duval Street as the tackiest street in American is not because it's tacky per se, but because of the tawdry leadership, the compulsive greed and the tunnel vision of those who, every day, permit it to corrode and to poison an otherwise wonderful place.
         Okay, nominations are now open to all.




p.s.- To be fair, a handful of very good restaurants still survive on Duval Street; and on the upper end of the street there are still a few tasteful shops and art galleries. How long before they become T-shirt shops? Who knows? And more to the point, who cares?
         As always, comments positive or negative are welcome.